Kaval's Kickoff: New stadium webcam unveiled

More late match heroics were on tap this past weekend at Buck Shaw as Marvin Chavez drilled an amazing free kick goal in the 78th minute to equalize and get a draw against the Colorado Rapids. While it was great to get another come from behind result, it was difficult to watch the club fall behind again. We have had a nasty habit of giving up the early goal and have had to rely on late goals to salvage a point. With a critical four-match road trip coming up, it is time to bury that habit and get some early goals to put the pressure on the opponent.

There has been a lot of activity at the stadium site as we continue to prepare the site for the foundation. Those huge piles that you see at the site are the crushed concrete and asphalt. Everything on the site will be recycled into the construction of the new stadium. This state of the art process will ensure that we receive a LEED Silver rating as an environmentally sustainable building.We are proud of our commitment to the environment and in being a steward of our community's resources.

It will all be much easier to track the process at the site because I am happy to announce that our stadium webcam, provided by EarthCam, is up and running! Since there is no high speed Internet at the site or even near the site, we had the unique challenge of providing the high-speed access to enable the camera. We ended up hacking together a solution that beams a line-of-site wireless signal from our office building almost a half-mile away. We also wanted to have a single camera in one location to track the progress instead of repositioning the camera in different phases of the construction. For that reason, we had our general contractor, Devcon, install a pole near Coleman on the open end of the stadium. This was done so you can see everything from one vantage point. The camera will take a photo daily and we will create a cool time lapse of the building.

There is only about a week left in the crushing at the site and then we can move into grading and site utilities. While it may seem like a lot of time crushing and getting the site prepared, it is a critical step. As many folks know, the site was a tank building factory. There is an environmental remediation plan in effect on the site and the ground water needs to be monitored for many, many years. The existing pump station that controls the ground water remediation is what you can see on the site with the covered awning. Those waterworks will remain at the site, albeit contained and hidden in the stadium. In addition to the pump station, over 30 monitoring wells have to remain on the site and must be accessible several times a year. Two wells are even under the field itself. We have developed a plan with our field maintenance team to access these in the offseason. The entire building and its foundationmust accommodate these wells and waterworks and the work we are doing now ensures that the wells are safe and at the proper heights and in good condition. This was all foreseen when we started and we are working diligently to get through this phase before we move onto the next steps.

As always, please let me know if you have any questions on the club or the stadium. I am available at President@sjearthquakes.com or via twitter @QuakesPrez or at my weekly office hours on Tuesdays between 3-5pm.